The Gift of Tears
Finding God's Presence in Grief and Suffering
The following is an excerpt from Weslea Pierson’s new book, To Weep With Those Who Weep, available now from Presence Pioneers Media. Order now!
Seasons of grief often include moments of deep sadness and tears. Tears are designed by God for a reason. The Bible says that He collects all of our tears in a bottle! Psalm 56:8 AMP writes,
“You have taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not recorded in Your book?”
In the New Living Translation, it starts with “You have taken account of my sorrows,” and He does. Ponder that just for a moment. He is not unaware of what we are going through, nor is He calloused to the tears that we cry. He is intricately involved in every season of our lives because He so deeply loves us.
I remember vividly a moment when I was sitting in my room at Street Life[1], and I was crying out to God to heal me. I was weeping because I was so incredibly tired physically, spiritually, and emotionally. In that moment, the presence of God came, and when I closed my eyes, I saw the Father embracing me. I leaned back against Him and felt peace. Almost as soon as I saw this picture in my mind's eye and felt the peace around me, I thought How can You be touching me right now, and I am not getting healed? A fresh wave of emotion and frustration washed over me. But He continued to hold me. He didn’t answer my questions at that moment, but He was taking account of my sorrows.
Later, I was reminded of what Paul wrote to the church of Corinth in 2 Corinthians 4:17. He wrote that our light and momentary affliction and suffering are working for us to produce an eternal weight of glory. Affliction and suffering work for us. They are producing something in us that has eternal value. Suffering and pain are working for us to produce something that is not of this world. The Bible says in both Romans 5 and James 1 that trials are working out patience, endurance, and proven character. The Lord allows us to walk through affliction. He does not immediately deliver us from pain. He sees the bigger picture and what it is producing in us. It is far more valuable than we realize. It has eternal worth.
I know from experience that it is not always easy to envision the eternal weight of glory. In the middle of sorrow, it can seem as though we are the weakest and most useless. I think often this is because we are in a society that glamorizes external production, people who do over those who can’t do. This is not the way of the Kingdom, nor is it the attitude of God’s heart toward us. He delights in weakness because it is there that His strength is perfected. He sees what it is producing in us, something that the world cannot take away. Not only that, but we can love Him from wherever we are and in whatever state we are in physically or emotionally.
When we are grieving, it is very difficult to do. Grieving beckons us to just be. To stop and feel. Though our love for Him is often demonstrated externally, it begins in the posture of our heart toward Him. Do not despise weakness. Reject the enemy’s lies about who God is and about the validity of your tears. The Triune God is with us presently in affliction, and He does not despise it, nor does He despise us.
Toward the end of my journey with chronic pain, I became infused with faith. The lies about God had been dispelled by the truth of what He says about Himself, not what my experience said about Him. I broke agreement with doubt, stopped questioning what His word says, and chose to believe no matter what it looked like externally. For the first two weeks of August 2015, I chose to believe that God is good, that He delights to heal, that He is my Healer, and that it was time for me to be healed. Every single day, I woke up declaring that it was my day to be healed. The suffering I endured for over a year had produced in me a deep belief in God’s ability and delight to heal. It exposed a belief that I held about my worth: that I was only as valuable as what I could produce for God. It exercised my faith, stretching me to believe regardless of my circumstances. It produced a deep trust in my heart toward God and taught me invaluable lessons about His comfort and love.
This was all before He miraculously healed me. I was being transformed in the middle of pain and suffering. An eternal weight of glory was also being produced, one that I will only access in the age to come. Do not lose heart. He is working the same, and more, in you.
God is patient with our suffering. Let us be a shining example of His likeness in a world where many are grieving and in deep anguish of heart. It is only in this age that we will have the opportunity to do so. The truth is that tears of sadness were not His design initially for the world, and they will be completely taken away at the end of this age. Praise God!
In Revelation 21:1-4 [AMP], it says,
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away (vanished), and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, arrayed like a bride adorned for her husband; and then I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “See! The tabernacle of God is among men, and He will live among them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God,] and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be death; there will no longer be sorrow andanguish, or crying, or pain; for the former order of things has passed away.”
What a stunning picture. The Creator of the Universe, our Bridegroom, will come and wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more sorrow. There will be no sadness, pain, or mourning. No more crying. It sounds like a dream! Notice that He won’t scold us for our tears or tell us that we shouldn’t be sad. If we think through the Psalms alone, we see King David mourning and weeping over many things, and God doesn’t just step in to stop him. The Bible says His grace is sufficient in our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9). Grace is His unmerited favor. He is not afraid of our weakness. He does not despise our tears. He draws near to the brokenhearted and those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). What an incredible Father we have! He has so much to teach us about how to approach someone who is heavyhearted and in tears.
God is not uncomfortable with sadness. He is not simply trying to “cheer us up” so that we are happy and laughing all the time. He Himself experienced loss and sadness while He was here as a man. In fact, the Bible says in Isaiah 53:3 that He was a “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” Jesus understands sorrow more than we can comprehend. He walked the most painful path there was so that we could experience His peace and comfort in the midst of our sorrows. He was abandoned by those closest to Him, betrayed, rejected, abhorred, mocked, and ridiculed, and felt countless other sorrows.
He also experienced grief through loss of life. Most of us know the Scripture, “Jesus wept,” but do we know why He did? Many have tried to explain the “why,” going as far as saying that He was weeping for the lack of faith of those around Him. The Bible does not say that. Let’s take a brief look at John 11:30-37 in the Amplified version and catch a glimpse of what was happening.
“Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met Him. So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her, saw how quickly Mary got up and left, they followed her, assuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came [to the place] where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her sobbing, and the Jews who had come with her also sobbing, He was deeply moved in spirit [to the point of anger at the sorrow caused by death] and was troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews were saying, “See how He loved him [as a close friend]!” But some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the blind man’s eyes, have kept this man from dying?”
Jesus was deeply moved by the sorrow caused by death. It moved Him so much that He wept at the tomb. It is important to note that Jesus had told both His disciples and Martha that Lazarus would rise again. He knew that resurrection was coming, yet still He wept. As you’ve already read and will read again, we are often told that since our loved ones are “with the Lord,” we ought not to weep; instead, we should be content and rejoice. This is not what Jesus exemplified for us. Lazarus was going to be resurrected right then and there, and yet He still wept. He was deeply moved by the sorrow.
In 1 Corinthians 15:26, Paul writes that the last enemy of God to be abolished is death. Think about that! Death is God’s enemy. If it is His enemy, then it is ours as well. In fact, this is greatly encouraging! When people die, the ache inside is not wrong. Nor is it a sign of weak faith or emotionalism. You might wonder about the Scripture that says, “death, where is your sting, grave, where is your victory?” How can that be so while you are also bearing the pain of death? In one sense, when we die, we will not taste the sting of death; instead, we will be caught up with the Lord. The grave will have no victory over the death of a believer because Jesus has already gained the victory! What incredible hope that we have. We never need to fear death. We can look forward to the day when we will see Him face to face. Not only that, but we can have great comfort in knowing a loved one is with the Lord, where there is no more weeping, pain, or bondage to sin. These two truths, however, do not in any way diminish the pain of death or the sorrow (to the point of anger) that it brings to us who are still earthbound. Jesus demonstrated that for us in His response to Lazarus’ family in their moment of deep grief and questioning.
Paul also demonstrates this same attitude in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, 8-11. He writes,
“Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.”
"For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction which occurred in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who rescued us from so great a danger of death, and will rescue us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us, if you also join in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons in our behalf for the favor granted to us through the prayers of many.”
Paul wrote how their afflictions led him to despair even of life, and yet in these desperate situations, he came to know God as Comforter. He writes that it produced such a deep trust in God that their hope would be in Christ alone. Paul did not say that he was happy during this time. This great man of faith, writer of the majority of the New Testament, wrote that he despaired of life! He faced afflictions so challenging that he wanted to die. He went on to say that it was only because of that deep anguish that He experienced the comfort that Christ gives. This enabled him to then comfort others in their affliction and suffering. It doesn’t say that he was able to correct them, counsel them, or cheer them up. He wrote that they experienced God’s comfort and then were able to pass on what they learned to those in deep pain. Oh, that we would gain this lesson from the apostle.
When I was living in chronic, bone-breaking pain with chikungunya, the Holy Spirit brought me to this passage, and it was as though a light switch had turned on. Why would God call Himself our Comfort if we would never need comfort? Seems pretty straightforward, but we often avoid others’ pain because, deep down, we believe that joy trumps pain and that God desires us to be happy. Unfortunately (or maybefortunately?), there is no such promise in Scripture for the Christ-follower. He promises to give us peace that passes our understanding (Phil. 4), comfort in all of our afflictions (2 Cor. 1), and joy in His presence by His Spirit (Ps 16, Gal 5), but this is not all. We are also promised suffering (Matt 5, Jn 16, 1 Pet 4, 2 Cor 4, etc).
We get to experience the comfort that comes from God during times of suffering. Only in this age and in this world can we experience God’s comfort amid sorrow because, in the age to come, all sorrow and pain will be eliminated. To truly meet someone in their struggle as Christ would, we must have a right understanding of pain and suffering.
To hear more stories and dive deeper into this topic, be sure to check out Weslea Pierson’s new book, To Weep With Those Who Weep. Available now!
[1] A ministry where I worked
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